Carnevale

by Michelle Lovric

  With great thanks to my editors, Sally Abbey and Jill Foulston, for their indispensable help and immaculate instincts about Cecilia, and to my agent, Tanja Howarth, particularly for finding them for me. Thanks also to Rebecca Kerby for fine-tuning the text and timeline.

  With deep thanks to Wendy and Fred Oliver for absolutely everything, to Joanna Skepers, Melissa Stein, James Tipton, Donna Martin, Kristina Blagojevitch and Jenny Lovric for reading the original manuscript, and to Susanna Geoghegan, Nancy Starr and Bart and Marilyn Stoner for their continual support.

  I’m grateful to Ornella Tarantola, Clara Caleo-Green, Cinzia Viviani and Lucio Sponsa for help with the Italian and Venetian vocabulary and iconography. Thank you to David Swift and Lynne Curran for help with the bizarre aspects of the eighteenth century and cat life; to Reggie Pennington for agricultural advice.

  Profound thanks to Alison Fell, Nicolette Hardee, Val Lee, Janie Mitchell, Susannah Rickards, Angela Robson and Katri Skala, for their generous, skilful commentaries on the text over the year it took to refine it.

  Thanks to June Mendoza for help with the technical aspects of portraiture; to Cynthia Craig for her kind and detailed help with Casanova; and to Tom Holland for his with Byron.

  With thanks also to the staff at the British and the London Libraries and the Marciana Library in Venice and to the National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery in London.

  And in Venice, deep gratitude to Donatella and Paolo Asta for their infinite kindness in allowing me to write the Palazzo Mocenigo scenes in Byron’s former apartments; to Michele Sammartini for the use of the Palazzo Molin Balbi Valier della Trezza, both as my Venetian domicile and as the setting for Cecilia’s studio in the book; to Paola and Pitagora Zoffoli for an insight into the feline life of Venice; to Alessandra Angelini and Diego Vianello and to Franco Gasperin for introducing me to the flavoursome world of Venetian proverbs; and to Ada Gasperin for the minestre.

  And warmest thanks to Sergio and Roberta Grandesso for the fragolino, and to Graziella, Emilio and Valentina Scarpa for the hundreds of 6 a.m. ottimi capucci non troppo schiuma at the Bar da Gino at San Vio, without which this novel would not have been written.

  Select Textual Acknowledgements

  The following books were invaluable in research for this novel:

  The Story Of My Life, by Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, translated by Willard R. Trask, Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition, 1997. English translation copyright © by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. Originally published as Histoire de Ma Vie, Edition intégrale, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Vénitien, by F. A. Brockhaus, Wiesbaden, Librairie Plon, Paris, 1960. © F. A. Brockhaus, Wiesbaden, 1960.

  Glenarvon, by Lady Caroline Lamb, Henry Colburn, London, 1816.

  Byron: A Self-Portrait Letters and Diaries 1798 To 1824, edited by Peter Quennell, John Murray, London, 1950.

  Dreams, Waking Thoughts And Incidents, by William Beckford of Fonthill, edited by Robert J. Gemmett, Fairleigh University Press. © 1971 Associated University Presses Inc, Cranbury, New Jersey.

  Vathek, by William Beckford, London, 1786.

  Author’s note

  Only truth can be invented.

  JOHN RUSKIN

  The invented characters in this book are Cecilia and her family, Mouchar, Maurizio Mocenigo, the gondolier and the cat.

  The others are real: Casanova and his family, Byron and his, Francesca Buschini, William Beckford, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ambassador Alvise Mocenigo, Count Waldstein of Dux and his servant Feldkirchner, Lorenzo da Ponte, Ali Pasha of Albania, William Fletcher, John Cam Hobhouse, Nurse Gray, Caroline Lamb, Annabella Milbanke, Marianna Segati, Margarita Cogni, Tita Falcieri, Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire Claremont, Ada and Allegra Byron, Marina Benzoni, Teresa Guiccioli, Julius Millingen, Angelica Kauffman and Rosalba Carriera, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Arundel and Giordano Bruno.

  All the literary works of Casanova are real. Casanova’s theories about love, women, Venice and portrait-painting and the anecdotes of his life are based on various allusions and anecdotes in his Histoire de Ma Vie. These memoirs, three thousand and six hundred pages of them, were written in French during his exile in Dux. They first appeared in German in 1822 and were not published in Italian till 1882. They are now translated into twenty-four languages and considered one of the most fascinating accounts of European life in the eighteenth century. Casanova’s letters from exile are invented, but partly based on some he sent to Francesca Buschini.

  The camp Gothic masterpiece Vathek is real, as was Byron’s passion for Beckford’s book. When Byron set off for his last journey to Greece in 1823, he ordered all his books and other property to be sold, except for his copy of Vathek. Also real are Byron’s ‘Reasons In Favour of a Change’ and his description of the demented elephant despatched by the Austrians. Many of Byron’s more colourful comments are culled from his letters to Hobhouse, his publisher John Murray, and his sister, Augusta. Caroline Lamb’s dire Glenarvon really exists and the 1816 edition may still be borrowed from the London Library. The Poupée de France did indeed dictate Venetian fashion for many years from her shop window in the Mercería. The descriptions of the Carnevale in Venice are drawn from the Gabriel Bella paintings in the Palazzo Querini Stampalia, where they may still be seen. The island of San Michele was in 1782 the home of the Camadolese monastery. It became the cemetery island of Venice early in the next century.

  Byron really was in Albania in 1809 and in Venice between 1816 and 1819. He lived at the Segati house in the Frezzeria and the Palazzo Mocenigo at San Samuele. He did indeed swim from the Lido to the Grand Canal, though only one occasion is recorded. He also studied Armenian on the island of San Lazzaro. (By coincidence, Casanova had also been involved with the Armenian community on the island. He was asked by the Venetian state to mediate with a fugitive cell of Armenian monks: this was one of the tasks assigned to him in the period before he returned from exile in 1774.)

  William Beckford’s connection with Casanova is imagined but entirely possible. They were both friends of William Hamilton. Beckford and Casanova were both in Venice at the dates described. Beckford’s letters of introduction in Venice were addressed to the Countess Giustiniana d’Orsini Rosenberg, at that time a respectable widow. But thirty years before she had been one of Casanova’s most picaresque lovers. Giustiniana, whom he called Miss XCV in his memoirs, was pregnant by a friend of Casanova’s; he tried to help her to abort the child. The attempt, involving the repeated application of a honeyed ointment called Paracelsus’ Aroph to the mouth of womb via the agent of Casanova’s ever-willing ‘steed’, was, though pleasurable, a failure. Casanova smuggled Giustiniana to a convent where the baby was born in secrecy. She returned to her family with her reputation more or less intact. By the time Casanova returned from his eighteen-year exile, Giustiniana had married the Count d’Orsini Rosenberg and set up her own salon in Venice. It was in this same salon that Beckford was entertained.

  Byron left Venice in 1819 and attached himself to the household of Teresa Guiccioli. Teresa’s family drew Byron into the Italian nationalist movement and he became interested in the parallel Greek cause. In 1823, he was elected to the Greek Committee formed to free Greece from Turkish rule. He joined the liberation forces personally at Missolonghi in January 1824. He died of malaria there on April 19th 1824, attended by Julius Millingen.

  Byron did write some memoirs of his own but they were ceremonially burned in his publisher’s offices in Albemarle Street on May 17th 1824, four weeks after his death. It was thought by his friends that the sexual revelations therein rendered them too dangerous to be allowed to survive. Hobhouse was among those who urged their destruction, even without having read them. To refute malicious allegations about him, years later, Teresa Guiccioli wrote her adoring Vie de Lord Byron, but this was considered too intimate to be published during her lifetime. However, Annabella also had her say: she persuaded Harriet Beecher Stowe to write her account of the disastrous marriage. I
t appeared in 1870, ten years after her death, as Lady Byron Vindicated.

  Byron’s autopsy and funeral were indeed as described. Mary Shelley was in London at the time. She watched Byron’s hearse ascend Highgate Hill, and recorded a wave of affection for the man who had cost her so much. Caroline Lamb, by chance, also encountered the funeral procession. When told who lay in the hearse, it is said that she became mentally deranged and that she never fully recovered.

  Finally, there is, as described in Part Four, a portrait of Byron on the island of Saint Lazzaro.

  The name of the artist remains unknown.

  M.R. Lovric lives in London and Venice. Carnevale is her first novel.

  ___________

  Praise for Carnevale

  ‘There is something irresistible about trying to trace a connection between notorious lover and memoirist Casanova and notorious lover and poet Lord Byron in Venice the seductive city where both men worked their way through galleries of women … Maybe Casanovrians play the same game that Byronists play, the search for the missing link, the one unknown woman who will make sense of some strange bits of Byron’s life. M.R. Lovric, in her first novel, has gone one better, conjuring not only the woman who makes sense of Casanova’s story, but who, thirty-odd years later, solves Byron’s story as well … This is a lush book, dripping with opulent descriptions and elegant imagery … Ambitiously imagined’ Australian Book Review

  ‘Think gondolas and pigeons and A Room with a View… a dreamy, fantastical novel’ Sunday Business Post

  ‘Cecilia is a charming character and this is a touching … even moving read’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘Extraordinary, an intriguing, magical tale woven around the enigmatic character and grandeur of the Venetian Republic’ AXM

  ‘Rarely have I seen a historical period so brilliantly portrayed. Lovric has brought Venice to life in all of its tattered glory’ Historical Novel Society

  ‘Lovric has made the city she loves into a character in its own right in her sumptuous debut novel’ WHO

  ‘The writing is sensual in a poetic kind of way … elegant with witty turns of phrase’ Melbourne Age Review

  ‘Lovric immerses us in the life and loves of beautiful Cecilia, the artistic daughter of an 18th-century Venetian merchant. The setting is faded yet decadent – think gondolas, palazzi, delicate food and amorous trysts. Cecilia has affairs with Casanova and the dashing Lord Byron. It’s a lavish description of a sensual education that drips detail and drama’ Elle

  ‘Venice, the decadent, beautiful and doomed city is the setting for this quasi-historical drama set during the last decades of the 18th century and the opening years of the 19th. This novel mixes fiction with reality as surely as water mixes with the air and stone in that strange, floating city … Part love story, part lesson in aesthetics, part history lesson, this is a fascinating book’ Tatler

  ‘Whether imagined as fiction or documented in history, the coming of age of a woman in Venice promises a provocative tale … Cecilia tells her own story in a confessional, first-person narrative – with occasional comments from Casanova’s sage and world-weary cat – but in her intimate account Venice appears as a ghostly presence’ Art Quarterly

  ‘M.R. Lovric’s debut novel is a lush account of love and intrigue in 18th-century Venice ... A dazzling, baroque tale’ Sunday Tribune

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  Copyright © M.R. Lovric 2001

  First published in Great Britain 2001 by Virago Press

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,

  50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN 978-1-4088-4283-6

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